Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Good Dog. Bad Dog.

Guys, sometimes our dogs wear me out. Between Sawyer's constant drooling and Jax antagonizing Sawyer, and both of them shedding like nobody's business, sometimes I literally feel like a parent who's unruly children have been let loose in the WalMart.

Lately I've begun to realize that even though they will literally spend 8 consecutive hours fighting over a tattered rope in our living room, they are not quite as dumb as they look and act 97% of the time. Last night my mom stayed at my house and as we were getting ready to go for a late walk around the neighborhood the dogs ran to the door as if they were coming...wrong. My mom politely sat them down and explained to the monsters, "Now we're going on a walk. You guys stay here and we'll be back soon." Then she proceeded to open the door as wide as it would go and walk out to our front porch. The dogs of course went right out, and proceeded to run circles in the driveway. I waved a biscuit around and threw it in the house and Sawyer ran right back in. Jax on the other hand, took some convincing. After pleading with him to come in the house, sweet talking with him, ignoring him, and offering several generous sized biscuits, he would have none of it. He finally agreed when I opened the car door and offered him a ride in mom's Camry. That he went for. I finally got him in the house and off we went on our walk, while I went on to explain to mom that I too, was shocked that despite the nice chat she had with the dogs about staying in the house, they still ran out when she opened the door and all but rolled out a red carpet.

When I got home from work today my neighbor across the street gave me the usual greeting and then added, "Hey Taryn, you know after you all left last night...your dogs took off out the front door and just went running down the street." Oh really? Did not know that. They're like velociraptors....they've learned how to open doors. Now what? Can't use our storm door all summer? Not sure, but this is definitely a problem.

Let's get to another issue...the Houdini factor. I crate trained Sawyer, so in the early years when I was at work, and asleep at night, Sawyer was in his crate in the guest room. Well, one afternoon my brother went to my house while I was at work to play with the monster and found him laying on the guest bed reading a Charles Dickens novel. Okay, maybe he wasn't reading...but he sure wasn't in his crate, and the crate was still shut as tight as when I left him. Problem. He Houdini'd his way out of that crate and that was the end of his crate days. Luckily he's learned and I can (for the most part) trust them to roam the house during the day. Well, I learned over the weekend that the magic tricks were not over. We shut the gate on our deck while the boy was laying down fertilizer for the grass so the dogs wouldn't trample it. I walked outside to ask him something and the pups were on the deck. I walk inside and walked back out about a minute later, and the gate is still closed but Sawyer is running around on the lawn. How? Why? What? This happened about 5 times throughout the day, without us knowing how it was happening. We'd walk him back up to the deck and close the gate and then 30 minutes later he was on the lawn again. He was a regular Sawyer Copperfield.

Later that afternoon I just happened to look over at the deck while inside mopping the floor just in time to witness Sawyer leap onto the rail and over the steps onto the lawn. So maybe he's not a magician, but I think we have an Olympic doglete on our hands. He also wins for brute force...the day we installed the dog door, we put the dogs outside and put the cover on it to keep them outside. Within 5 minutes, Sawyer had barrelled head-first through the thing and knocked it of the wall. Yay for us.

Dang these mutts make me crazy. The video below is a perfect illustration of what happens for a solid 2 hours every night while I try to relax and accomplish things like this blog post.

Yeah, that's not distracting or anything. Oh, and my personal favorite is the one below where Sawyer bears the shame of what he and Jax did while we were at work (fyi...we keep the ottomans on the sofas while we are gone so the dogs stay of the furniture)...

Fortunately for our dogs, even their bad behavior is quickly forgotten because they're so dang cute sometimes.

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Yes, my boys are presh. They wear on my last damn nerve (all 3 of them), but they certainly keep it interesting around here :-).